It’s Only Censorship When It Happens to a Fundie

Today I received an email from Tony Perkins of the American Fundie Association (It’s not on their website, so I can’t provide a link.). It’s titled “YouTube Censorship: Another Chinese Import?” Tony tells us that YouTube has removed an anti-Obama video that discusses Obama’s positions on abortion.

This is one of those gruesome abortion videos that shows buckets of blood and gore, in an effort to make people react emotionally and not logically. What they neglect to tell you in those videos is that removal of a tumor is just as sickeningly gory. Nobody is advocating that we stop cancer surgeries. (Just cancer cures. See their position on stem cell research.)

What I find amusing about this whole affair is that fundies are always running around screaming about how television, movies, magazines, billboards, etc. are too graphic; they violate community standards, and must be censored. But when somebody tells them that their video is too graphic and violates community standards, they scream bloody fetus.

This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 12:02 am and is filed under Censorship, Offline Video, Politics.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

16 Responses to “It’s Only Censorship When It Happens to a Fundie”

If there’s one thing fundies know, it’s how to put up a fuss. “Partial birth” abortion is now a normal part of every-day vernacular, despite having absolutely no grounding in any scientific aspect of the procedures it is used to describe. It was designed to provoke an emotion and now the media dutifully uses that term to legitimize it further.

That’s the thing about fundies. They operate completely on emotion. There isn’t one iota of logic among the lot of them. (That’s why the “logic” of their creationism defenses or evolution attacks are so tortured.)

Well of COURSE, Ron! They are spreading the word of GOD so censoring them is censoring him! Remember that this is the same guy that says, “Thou shalt not kill,” then later goes and gives them the ok to do so whenever it is convenient.

You bring up a good point, Sarah. When we look at this situation, we see two sides: Our point of view and their point of view. Rules or standards that apply to one side should also apply to the other side.

Fundies only see one side: The Truth™. There is no other side. Anything that opposes or gets in the way of The Truth™ must be suppressed.

While I agree with your basic point, that fundies bitch and thrash about any counter to their rhetoric while systematically trying to silence their opposition, I fundamentally disagree with the casual use of the word “censorship.”

When YouTube pulls a video or a magazine refuses to publish and article, yes, that’s censorship but it’s not the kind of censorship that freedom of speech is meant to protect against. No government agency, no entity with force of law is demanding prior restraint. A private organization is simply refusing to distribute certain content and that is, and should be, perfectly allowable as long as there is an abundance of outlets.

Both sides of the aisle like to jump up and down and scream that their ideas are being suppressed when, in fact, private content providers are simply picking and choosing what they publish based on the sensibilities of their patrons. When government agencies begin systematically prescreening the press, then we should contest and even take up arms but private organizations really should get to do as they choose.

That’s a really good point. It’s one I mention occasionally (but neglected this time). Free speech only refers to government interference.

That actually makes this situation even more ridiculous than it first appears. Fundies lobby the FCC and Congress to impose restraints upon what is allowed on television. They are advocating true censorship.

This YouTube situation is just an instance of commercial speech. YouTube is entirely within their rights, yet Tony Perkins is trying to make it out to be the moral equivalent of true censorship (which, ironically and hypocritically of course is what he himself advocates the rest of the day).

If the fundies don’t like YouTube’s policies, they’re free to avoid the site and spend all their time with their fellow mouth-breathers over at GodTube.

I’m not sure your explanation goes far enough. It’s perhaps legal when content providers “censor” content, but we are currently in a situation where the most popular media form (television) is owned and controlled by an extremely small handful of people. In some ways they are as powerful as the government itself. If there was a coordinated commercial effort to censor political content on the teevee, I argue that censorship is as dangerous as offically state sponsored censorship and should be illegal.

While there are really frightening implications to the consolidation of media power that we’ve seen in the last twenty years, the solution your comment seems to suggest would be to mandate what political coverage media outlets provide. I’m not sure that that is either constitutional or really that good an idea.

I find this all to be a strong argument in favor of a dynamic, autonomous and well funded public media outlet after the same fashion as the BBC. There was a push for such in the sixties but public media has been waning ever since, much to my chagrin.

This does not, however, change the precise issue at hand, which is that YouTube pulled a video. There are a number of other outlets for such materials. This is the internet we’re talking about, after all.

I’m not advocating government mandated content quotas. I want the media broken up. I don’t want there to be three owners of all the airwaves. I want there to be thousands scattered all over. I want re-regulation of station ownership. That would entirely solve the problem.

Additionally, a vast intentional conspiracy to suppress a political idea by the media should be actionable in court. I’m not sure where you draw the line and I don’t think we’re “there” yet where we need such a law (especially since real liberals seem to finally be allowed on the teevee with Maddow’s amazing new show), but my point was that if the wise old aristocrats are suppressing political free thought and manipulating people to vote for somebody, that’s antithetical to some of the very core values of our country. Of course much of that may already be actionable using existing laws (such as libel).

So really, after additional thought, the ideal solution is breaking up the transnational media conglomerates.